| President Obama at the Carrier Classic Aboard the USS Carl Vinson |
But these fake claims are nothing new to American politics. Nixon campaigner, Donald Segretti, stole Democratic letterhead and forged a letter claiming that Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson was arrested for homosexuality and fathered an illegitimate child with a teenager. Thomas Jefferson was smeared in his campaign as being ‘Godless.’ Civil War hero and squeaky clean northern presidential candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, was slandered by opponents in the South, who claimed he was an alcoholic, shot his mother, was infected with syphilis, committed income tax fraud, and embezzled the salaries of dead Civil War soldiers.
| General Rutherford B. Hayes |
The ideologically obsessed love to use forgeries to dupe the public into sanctioning acts they wouldn’t approve of, otherwise. In the run-up to the Iraq war, President Bush didn’t have public support for an unprovoked attack. So a group of ex-CIA officers—including former National Security Council and State Department consultant Michael Ledeen--forged a document that claimed Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, was seeking yellowcake uranium powder from Niger to build atomic weapons. They fed the forgery to Italian Intelligence officer, Rocco Martino, who then passed it on to the CIA; and it found its way into the National Intelligence Estimate. The false narrative was delivered to the American people in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech to intensify the drumbeat to a prearranged war.
False narratives are flooding the media and internet about the Affordable Care Act. There are the absurd visceral fictions about ‘death panels’ and ‘killing grandma,’ or that you’ll be jailed if you don’t buy healthcare. Senator Rand Paul falsely claimed that you’ll “go to jail” if you don’t buy health insurance and refuse to pay the penalty. And there is the more subtle fictional wordsmithing: Opponents refer to the Act as a ‘bill,’ as though it’s being debated in Congress. It’s not; it’s a law passed three years ago, affirmed by the Supreme Court, and mandated by President Obama’s re-election. What forgers and creators of false narratives count on is that they’ll influence an uninformed and easily-influenced public to act in a way they wouldn’t, otherwise. And you know what? They’re often right.
People may disagree with the law, and vehemently, but there’s a Constitutional procedure to change laws: repeal them by a majority vote. The problem arises when a loud, ideological minority exhausts democratic options, and turns to anarchistic hostage-taking to get their way. In the case of the Affordable Care Act, opponents are only too happy to shut down the government, force it into default, damage the credit of the USA costing taxpayers billions of dollars in higher borrowing costs for decades to come, and subverting the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, not to mention the international humiliation. The shutdown is already costing taxpayers $300 Million every day.
What kind of person would put their own interests above the law and welfare of the country? Representative Michelle Bachmann said regarding the shutdown, "We’re very excited. “It's exactly what we wanted, and we got it.” Representative Marsha Blackburn joked that “…closing down the government will probably help people realize they don't need it.” Schizophrenically, Congressman Randy Neugebauer, an anti-government ideologue who voted for the shutdown, blamed and berated a park ranger at the WWII Memorial for refusing entry to WWII vets, because the Memorial was closed due to Congress’ shutdown. These are the same elected officials who like to proclaim stridently that they’re Constitutional originalists, yet there’s no mention in the Constitution of a debt ceiling. There is, however, this bold proclamation in Section 4 of the 14th Amendment: 'The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned.'
I’m reminded of a quote by an earlier ideologue who greatly valued deception to further the aims of his cause: “For great is the value of deceit, provided it be not introduced with a mischievous intention. In fact action of this kind ought not to be called deceit, but rather a kind of good management, cleverness and skill, capable of finding out ways where resources fail, ...” –Saint John Chrysotom, Archbishop of Constantinople and Doctor of the Church, known as the ‘Golden Throat’
